


First Snow

by MakingPoetry



Series: White Out [2]
Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Past Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, they're both Winter Soldiers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 04:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2334662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MakingPoetry/pseuds/MakingPoetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The recognition didn’t stop him from drawing his own gun from where it'd been hidden underneath his jacket, though. Recognition certainly wasn't going to stop the man who'd formerly been Captain America from putting him down like a rabid animal. How long had they been kept in the same place? Had their cryotubes been next to each other when they were on ice?</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Snow

**Author's Note:**

> This fic actually takes place before Cold Hands, Warm Heart as it's the origins story for how Bucky ditched his last mission, found Steve, and ended up with the Avengers.

His handlers made it sound like this was his final mission, the last thing that they asked of him. He didn't know what was in the future for him after this was complete, but that was hardly something that he should have been concerning himself with at the moment. The mission should have been easy enough for him. It was perhaps one of the most challenging things that he had been sent to do, made even more challenging by the fact that he had been sent alone for this final act, but he should have been able to handle it. He wasn't. He might have, if he hadn't met firm opposition that didn't seem to know when to give up and die.

The woman was familiar, though he couldn't exactly place why. He thought that maybe he'd seen her before on a mission, but there was something about her that seemed to say it was more than that. It wasn't necessarily an obvious thing. She was good at keeping it off of her face, but he could still see it in her eyes; recognition and pain. He didn't understand it though, didn't understand why he couldn't seem to kill her or why she hadn't killed him, even when she'd had the chance.

"Your name is James."

The helicarrier was starting to break apart under their feet, glass shattering and metal groaning as it broke free. Another explosion rocked the helicarrier and he staggered before steadying himself again, his gun half raised. He looked from the woman to the man with the wings. They were both equal threats, though maybe the woman more so, and he'd tried to kill the both of them. Yet here they were, trying to reason with him. Rather, the woman was, at least. The man didn't look like he liked this one bit, and honestly, who could blame him.

"We knew each other years ago."

He shook his head. No, that wasn't him, he didn't remember that. It sounded familiar though, made it feel like something was trying to claw its way out of his brain. He could remember a flash of red hair in the dark, a warm body in his arms. It was vague and distant, and yet for just a second, it felt sharp and clear. The moment was fleeting, going as quickly as it had come, but it was just long enough to make him doubt himself. His resolve started to waver, and he lowered his gun. Hesitation and doubt had no place here; they could mean failure when timing was everything. But for the first time, he wondered if finishing this mission would really be a success, or if _that_ would be the failure. There was something that was telling him not to shoot, a voice in the back of his mind, a memory amongst the jumble of things.

The woman was saying something again, but he couldn't make out the words over the sound of another explosion. This time, it was the glass and metal beneath his feet that was giving way. The metal twisted and tore apart, the glass breaking into pieces. He pitched over backwards and started to fall. He watched them above him, amongst the flaming wreckage, as the winged man caught the woman, carrying her to safety. She was watching him. _Him_ , as he fell, not the other man. It was the last thing that he saw before he hit the river and started to sink.

~-------~

There had been a strong temptation to let himself drown in the river, because he had failed, Hydra had failed, and the world would be better off without him. Hydra wouldn't take back a failure, and later, when he'd dragged himself out of the water, he hadn't even tried to go back to them. There was hardly anything left. Everything that he'd ever known was crumbling down around him, just as the helicarrier had. Hydra had taken care of him, hurt him, yes, punished him for his failures and uncooperativeness, but they had been all that he'd known.

For a long moment, he'd sat on the bank of the river with his gun in his hand, wondering again if he should end it. A bullet in his skull would be kinder than what others would do to him if they found him.

In the end, he didn't. He holstered his gun and made his way back into the city. He kept out of sight, stole some clothes to cover his arm and his face, and slept in back allies. He made sure not to draw attention to himself, kept an eye out for Hydra and Shield alike. Anyone who knew who he was would recognize him the moment they saw him, and those that didn't would raise suspicion if they caught sight of his metal arm. He was careful, hesitant to even go into the Smithsonian, but he did. There were a lot of people there but no one really paid very much attention to him. It allowed him to be free to make his way through the museum in peace.

Ultimately, he ended up in the Captain America exhibit, staring up at his own face. That was it; that was the name that the woman had called him on multiple occasions. James Buchanan Barnes and Steven Grant Rogers. They were both hailed as heroes, both of them giving their lives in service to their country. Bucky had fallen from a train, and Steve had gone down with a plane. Neither of their bodies had ever been recovered.

~-------~

He needed to get out of town. He'd spent too long here and if there was anything left of Hydra and they knew that he was there, they would want to take care of him. He was a lose end, and Hydra didn't let those go. In the end though, he supposed he'd stayed for too long. He was waiting at the bus stop, head down and brim of his baseball cap pulled low, when it happened. He caught sight of a flash of silver out of the corner of his eye and turned. There was a man with a gun standing down the street. The soldier recognized his attire as from Hydra, but it was more than that. They weren't just one and the same, but the man was the same one that he had seen in the museum. The man who had gone down with the plane. It was hard to tell at first, with the mask over half of his face, and it didn't really sink in until after Bucky was in motion, leaping over and dropping down behind a car to avoid being shot in the head-the bullet grazing his right arm instead-but eventually, he recognized the man.

The recognition didn’t stop him from drawing his own gun from where it'd been hidden underneath his jacket, though. Recognition certainly wasn't going to stop the man who'd formerly been Captain America from putting him down like a rabid animal. How long had they been kept in the same place? Had their cryotubes been next to each other when they were on ice? 

The people who had been standing with him at the bus stop had scattered by the time he risked a look over the car, and the people across the street were running too, alerted by the gunshot like wild deer. It was good of them to run, because if they got in the way, they would simply end up collateral damage at the hands of another Hydra assassin. There was another gunshot and he quickly ducked down again. He wasn't used to being the one pinned down; he was used to being in charge. He needed a plan of attack, some way to get in close behind the assassin's-behind _Steve's_ -defenses. The bus was pulling up now, and though he wasn't sure if it planned to stop or not considering the chaos that had just erupted, he was going to use it to his advantage. He just hoped it wasn't full.

He darted out from where he was crouched, running along on the other side of the bus, putting it between himself and Steve. The moment that he was in motion, he heard gunfire again, saw the bullets ripping through the side of the bus like it was made of paper, heard people screaming. He grimaced even as the bus accelerated and swerved, quickly taking his cover with it, but he had nearly reached the source of the gunfire anyway. As soon as he rounded the back end of the bus, he charged at Steve, slamming his left shoulder into his chest with enough force that it would have broken the sternum of a regular man. Neither of them were regular men.

Steve staggered back, nearly going down as Bucky tried to _force_ him down, but he got his shield arm in between them and shoved Bucky away. Recovering quickly, Bucky came at him again, catching the edge of the shield in his metal hand when Steve tried to smash it into his face. Steve raised the gun again and Bucky yanked the shield to the side, pulling Steve off balance before reaching for his gun hand, fingers curling around his wrist. Instead of trying to pull away, Steve stepped in closer, ramming his head into Bucky's face.

He heard the crack as his nose broke but the pain didn't stop him. He twisted Steve's arm around, the muzzle of the gun pointing at Steve's leg just as the gun went off. It was a clean shot at least; the bullet didn't lodge against bone. Steve grunted at the pain and Bucky took advantage of his momentary hesitation to drive him back against the wall. He braced his metal arm across the shield and still held tightly to Steve's wrist with his other hand. If at all possible, he wanted to make it through this without serious injury or death.

" _We know each other_ ," he opted for speaking Russian, as if there would be anyone nearby eavesdropping, as if they wouldn't be able to speak Russian too if they were. If Hydra was listening, they would know.

It got Steve's attention, though not the response that Bucky would have hoped for. " _I don't. You're the mission,_ " he snapped back. He shoved Bucky away from him, raising his gun even as Bucky was in the process of twisting it out of his hand. He could have used it against Steve, but he didn't. He did, however, use it to block Steve's knife when he tried to stab Bucky with it.

Frustrated, knowing that they were most likely evenly matched and that if Steve didn't kill him, they could fight until they both died, he kicked Steve in the leg, where he'd shot him, and dropped the gun to grab hold of one of the straps on the front of Steve's uniform. Swinging him around, Bucky threw Steve to the ground and planted a foot on his chest to hold him down. Steve responded by stabbing Bucky in the leg. Naturally. Bucky grit his teeth against the pain, grabbing onto Steve's shield with both hands and wrenching it out of Steve's grasp-nearly breaking Steve's arm in the process.

Breathing hard and with Steve's knife still in his leg, Bucky shoved the edge of the shield against Steve's throat. He was mindful of his own strength though, made sure that he wasn't going to crush his windpipe. " _I dream about falling from a train. It's your hand that I'm reaching for_." For a moment, Steve stopped struggling beneath him, stared up at him with wide eyes instead. Bucky took it as a sign that he was getting through to him now, and continued. " _Do you dream about going down with a plane?_ "

Steve looked like he would have physically recoiled from Bucky if he'd had anywhere to go, if Bucky hadn't been essentially standing on his chest with the shield at his throat. There was nowhere for him to go.

" _If you still want to shoot me, then go ahead, but you know me._ " If, in the end, he couldn't get through to Steve, then it felt fitting somehow to die at his hand, instead of letting himself drown or taking a gun to his own head.

In the end, he eased up a bit so that Steve could speak. " _I dream about a plane going down. And ice._ " There was more, something that he wasn't telling Bucky, but the fact that there was something there at all was good enough for him.

" _Hydra will want us both dead_ ," he said, reaching down to pull the knife from his leg before stepping back.

He offered a hand out to Steve, and after a long moment of hesitation, Steve took it. Bucky pulled him to his feet, pushing the shield against his chest. It was his, after all, and if he was going to try and kill Bucky again, he would do it whether or not he had his shield.

" _What are you going to do?_ " Steve asked.

Bucky shot a glance in his direction but didn't verbally respond. Instead, he strode out into the middle of the road, very determined not to limp, and stood there in front of a coming car. The man driving slammed on the brakes, stopping within feet of Bucky, and he went around to the driver's side, wrenching open the door. The man was saying something, something about thinking Bucky was going to kill him, but he wasn't paying that much attention. He undid the man's seatbelt and hauled him out of the car, tossing him aside. "Get in," he said to where Steve was still waiting, as he slid into the car.

That was how they fled D.C. and managed to more or less evade Hydra. Along the way, they ditched the first car and stole another before Steve suggested that they needed a doctor, seeing as how they were both injured. One thing led to another and the doctor they ended up finding turned out to be a man named Bruce. Bruce, after realizing who they were, eventually brought them to the Avengers.

~-------~

The next time that he saw the woman from the helicarrier was in Avengers Tower. The sight of her spooked him, but she said nothing about what had happened then, nothing about what they had said or the way that she seemed to know him. It confused him at first, but eventually he took it as a comfort. Whatever they had been before, whatever he had _done_ , she seemed to neither blame him for it nor expect anything from him. She was, he discovered, a lot like him. While she hadn't been twisted and warped by Hydra in the way that he or Steve had, she had been molded into an assassin from a young age. There was something about her that he trusted.

Someday, though, he would have to ask her about things, about what had happened before. Sometimes, at night when he dreamed he dreamed of her, and other times of Steve. What was most confusing was when he dreamed of them both in the same way; intimate, familiar. He never told anyone about those dreams, not even during his daily therapist appointments. He told them about his other dreams instead, the ones about killing and death and falling. There were plenty of them to occupy the therapist's time, to make them think that he was telling them everything. Those dreams about Steve and Natasha felt personal to him.

~-------~

The first time that he had a violent flashback was when Tony was repairing his arm. It wasn't the first time they'd had to do it, because it wasn't the first time he'd gotten too rough when he was sparring with one of the others. It was, however, the first and last time he hit Tony so hard that he knocked him across the room. He wasn't sure which one of them was more surprised; Tony or himself. He expected the same reaction that Hydra had had, men with guns aimed at him, being punished, but there was nothing. They made sure that he wasn't a threat, that Tony was all right, and then they made sure that _he_ was all right.

In the future, they disabled his arm during repairs. At first, it made him panic, made him feel like he was weak and vulnerable, but no one ever hurt him, and there were no more incidents. The people here were good to him, as unexpected and unsettling as that was. Eventually, maybe, he would get used to it, he would understand that they were nothing like Hydra, and that they weren't going to punish him for mistakes or little things-or even big things, like when he'd hit Tony. No one blamed him for it.

~-------~

At night, he slept on the floor more often than the bed. He'd tried to sleep in the bed, he really had, but it was too big and too soft and it seemed _strange_. Instead, he dragged the sheets onto the floor and curled up with his back against the wall. Most times, like tonight, he had nightmares. He didn't think that he was loud enough-most of the time-to wake anyone else, but tonight there was a hand on his arm, gentle but firm, and there was a voice speaking to him, low and calm. At first he thought he was still dreaming, but then he realized he wasn't. He woke quickly, disoriented at first, but it didn't stop him from sliding his hand under his pillow, where he kept a knife just in case. As he blinked away the sleep from his eyes though, he realized that it was only Steve crouched next to him in the dark.

"You were having a nightmare," he said quietly.

Uncurling his fingers from the handle of his knife, Bucky frowned. "I woke you?" Steve's room was only across the hall, but if he'd still been that _loud_ , then someone else might have heard too.

Steve hesitated for a moment before shrugging. "I was already awake," he admitted. "Nightmares."

"I see." Bucky was awake now, and there was no reason for Steve to stay. Yet he still lingered. Bucky said nothing and merely waited for him to explain himself.

After a moment, Steve ducked his head, removing his hand from Bucky's arm. "Could I stay?"

Bucky frowned, and Steve clarified what he meant.

"Here, with you. For the night?"

"Because of your dreams?" The concept was foreign to Bucky, and he wasn't sure why Steve would want to stay with _him_ of all people. Maybe it was because they had some sort of connection, that they'd known each other before Hydra had turned them into living weapons. At the same time, that was exactly the reason that he was wary and confused about it; why would you seek comfort with a weapon? In turn, why would a _weapon_ need comfort? They were supposed to be thinking of themselves as human beings, but that was still a little hard for him to do, as well.

"If you don't want me to, I can go," Steve said.

Bucky didn't say anything for a long moment, and Steve started to get up to leave, seeming crestfallen. He didn't get very far before Bucky reached out and grabbed him by the wrist. "You can stay." He was still somewhat reluctant about it, but he didn't mind Steve's company. Maybe Steve being there would help both of them sleep better, though he wasn't about to admit that idea.

The tension dropped from Steve's shoulders, and he managed a small smile. "Thank you."

Steve seemed unsure of what to do now, so Bucky sighed before tossing back the edge of his blanket to make room for him. Steve's smile brightened and he slid under the blanket, his back to Bucky. After he'd settled the blanket over both of them again, Bucky wasn't quite sure what to do with himself. Should he put an arm around Steve? Was that the sort of thing that people did? Would Steve mind that? In the end, after a long moment of debate, he just curled his arm against his chest, the other under his head. Steve didn't seem to mind the lack of contact, though it was hard to tell when he was facing away. He was quiet though, and eventually Bucky was satisfied that there was nothing more to do or say, and closed his eyes.

In the morning, when he woke up, Steve was gone. Bucky wondered if he'd ever come into the room in the first place or if he'd dreamed that too, but the look Steve gave him at breakfast told him that he hadn't imagined it. No one else in the kitchen seemed to be aware of what had happened. Clint and Natasha were talking quietly to each other and Bruce was silently pouring a cup of coffee. Tony was nowhere to be seen. Steve took a seat near the corner, where he could be by himself. Bucky paused for a moment with his breakfast in hand, surveying his options. Normally, he sat by himself as well.

Today, he dragged a chair around to where Steve was sitting and sat down next to him, his shoulder brushing against Steve's. Steve turned his head slightly in Bucky's direction, as if he was surprised, but didn't say anything. Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky saw Steve relax, the hard line of his shoulders softening. Clearly, Bucky had done the right thing. Neither of them said a word to the other, and in the comfortable silence, Bucky ate his breakfast. Maybe he could get used to this, after all.


End file.
